My Stop-Motion Animation

Finally I have completed my stop motion animation, I began by illustrating two characters, the giraffe and his friend. I then cut out images of things I associated with hope and despair for example Bill Hicks for me is a hopeful but relentlessly passionate comedian. Whereas The Westboro Baptist Church are a group of hateful and aggressive people pushing extremist views forbidding and condemning homosexuals and other subcultures and mass media. Still I'm not trying to excuse it for its lack of narrative. I hope somehow you don't vote me a pass but a merit at least  if not for the design the effort? Appreciate that guys and girls.

Production

To create my animation
I used the following:

• A4 Paper
• A3 Black Paper
• 1 Gel Pen
• 1 Ink Pen
• 1 Pair of scissors
• 1 Computer
• 1 Printer
• HUE HD Camera (Web Cam)

I used iStopMotion linked up to the HUE HD camera I then laid down my A3 black paper and placed my cut-outs accordingly, sometimes having to erase frames that included my hand, or I had changed the position of my characters too quickly, a way to avoid doing this would be to use the 'onion skin' feature.

This is where an outline of your last frame will appear before you take another still. This helps you to create your animation with painstaking accuracy. It took me a duration of around two hours to create my animation, after completion I then exported the animation by clicking export movie.

Post-Production

When I had exported my short animation I opened it up using iStopMovie, a film-making software ideal for creating short, uncomplicated films. I then sourced an Mp3 file save of The Flaming Lips - This Here Giraffe dragged the music onto the timeline and then experimented with a range of video filters. After I decided on the 'cartoon' themed video filter I added credits, naming some of the characters that had featured themselves i.e. Bill Hicks, William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski etc.  After this I then exported the film and then uploaded the short animation by using the Blogger Video upload option and publishing this very page!